Frequently Asked Questions

Scope

Questions on the basic ideas of utilitarianism are covered
in a separate document.
Common
criticisms of the theory are also
covered separately. This FAQ
is a collection of matters arising, not covered in other areas.

Rule utilitarianism is suggested as a "variant" of utilitarianism which
differs
from act
utilitarianism
(ie. the original utilitarian system, as described by Jeremy Bentham -
"act"
is prefixed merely to help distinguish the two) in that it proposes
we use rules for determining right and wrong, rather than the
felicific
calculus, and only the formation of rules being subject to the calculus.
(See the Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Penguin Dictionary of
Philosophy and also the works of RM Hare - e.g. "Moral Thinking" - for
details.) It is now
commonly
believed that rule utilitarianism and act utilitarianism are not mutually
exclusive as they have sometimes been held to be... since rules can be of
arbitrary complexity, it would
be theoretically possible to design a rule which gave the same results as
felicific
calculus in any specific situation.

The arguments in favour of rule utilitarianism (for example: reducing
the time taken to determine the proper course of action; and reducing the
likelihood that our judgement will be prejudiced by features in a specific
case which do not exist in the general case - e.g. personal involvement)
can be quite easily accommodated under a
normal (act) utilitarian scheme - Jeremy Bentham certainly never advocated
that we try to calculate the
rightness or wrongness of every single act from first principles.

All utilitarians will re-use the results from previous calculations in
those situations
which they judge to be suitably similar: I suggest that the difference
between an act
utilitarian and a rule utilitarian is simply the frequency with which they
judge these
"suitably similar" situations to occur.

An act utilitarian would more inclined to treat each new situation as
different from all the others and requiring a fresh calculation; a rule
utilitarian
will be more
inclined to notice the similarities between the present case and previous
ones, and therefore having a similar solution as those previous cases. The
difference will in
part be determined by the agent's estimation of the cost of applying the
felicific
calculus (e.g. in time, lost opportunities etc) against the benefits of
doing so
(e.g. the allowance for details specific to that case, where these aren't
prejudicial to
the agent).

A sensible act utilitarian will re-use the results of previous
calculations where this
seems optimal; a sensible rule-utilitarian will take care to ensure that
his approach
remains consequentialist; the difference, then, between an act-utilitarian
and a rule
utilitarian, may not be as large as is sometimes thought.

Utilitarians can believe or disbelieve in free will theory - the principle
of utility is compatible with both views. That said, utilitarians generally
tend to reject those theories of free will that are incompatible with
determinism.

It is a common mistake to suppose that utilitarians have a fixed
approach to controversial political issues. While utilitarians agree on
what the criteria for good social policy are (being its conformability
to utility), we freely and commonly disagree on which policies are
actually useful. We know which goals we should aim for, but we are no
better equipped than any others in politics to decide which policies will,
in practice, help us achieve those goals.
One may ask a utilitarian what makes people
happy, but one would be unlikely to receive a better answer than can
be given by the psychologist. One may ask a utilitarian about the national
debt, but would be unlikely to receive a better answer
than would be given from the economist. Plainly, knowing the goals that
we wish society to achieve does not imply that we know in which direction
we must travel to arrive there. But, of course, some directions seem more
promising than others.

The scenario is usually presented something like this: a doctor has
several patients who will die if they don't receive organ donations.
Perhaps one needs replacement kidneys, another needs a replacement heart,
or whatever. Now supplies of these organs have come short, and there are
no
spare organs. There are, however, a number of healthy people available who
could be suitable donors, except that they are unwilling to sacrifice
themselves to save the others. The number of people required to supply the
organs is less than the number of lives can be saved by carrying out the
transplants and, in this situation, it is suggested, utilitarianism
supports killing some people to save the lives of those in need of
replacement organs, since the harm of killing a few is supposed to be less
than the harm of many dying. Does this follow?

Not necessarily. There are a whole host of side effects we would need to
consider. For example, how could we pick a victim for our supplies,
without generating fear and alarm in the community? If someone who goes to
hospital with a minor complaint gets killed for his body parts by the
doctors, would this not generate a fear of hospitals in the general
populace... who would then refuse to enter one lest a similar situation
occur again? And how, if we give doctors the power to decide who should
die and who should live, do we stop doctors abusing their powers and
becoming, for instance, extortionists? There is also the assumption that
different people's lives necessarily have roughly equal worth... which is
simply ridiculous from a utilitarian perspective. What if the two
recipients are Hitler and Goring, and the forced donor is Martin Luther
King?

Now, some may suggest, these concerns are irrelevant to the basic issue.
The scenario can changed in the details to overcome these potential
problems - it can be specified in the description of the scenario that the
necessary assumptions hold. In that case where, on balance, the effects
are the best if we kill someone, does utilitarianism support it?
Of course it does.
Can it ever be right to kill some to save others? Under any plausible
system, I suggest, the answer is yes. The alternative is that we would let
everyone die rather than kill a single individual, which is nonsensical if
we assume that life is valuable.

There are indeed new ideas in utilitarianism. Not only have several
revisions to the core theory been proposed since Bentham's time
(for example negative utilitarianism and preference
utilitarianism, to name just two) but there have been significant
developments in the application of the theory too: modern utilitarians
are often at the forefront of campaigns to promote better treatment
of non-human animals
[1] (proposing equal consideration of interests,
independently of species), and some utilitarians are particularly keen
on using new technologies for the purpose of
paradise-engineering.

I suggest the emphasis on Bentham and Mill occurs for a number of reasons:

The basic issues raised by them are covered well, and in a way
that remains useful - even in debates about newer forms of utilitarianism.

The Bentham and Mill texts are sufficiently old that they are no longer
protected by copyright, allowing lengthier extracts or even
quotation in entirety. More recent utilitarian texts would be available
on the web today if it were not for the fact that the reproduction rights
are often the property of their respective author's publishers.

Some philosophers have failed to keep abreast of the latest developments,
so that they don't know about the more recent ideas... they suggest
the study of Bentham and Mill simply because they don't know of anything else.

The main similarity between the two is that they are both usually
hedonistic theories, ie. both concerned (solely) with pleasure and pain.
The difference between the two, is whose interests (whose
pleasure
and pain) count when determining the rightness or wrongness of an action.
An egoist would think that only the interests of the agent himself count,
while the utilitarian would think that all interests count. So,
for
example, a utilitarian would believe it is wrong to do something that
harms someone
else, if the benefit (to the agent) is smaller than that harm. An egoist
would think it always right to act in such a way as to benefit himself,
even if
this resulted in massive harms for everyone else.
So an egoist would tend to agree with a utilitarian that, "what is good
for an individual is that individual's happiness". But he would deny, "So
what is good generally is happiness generally".

Under some definitions, being entirely self-centred, egoism actually fails
to qualify as an "ethical" theory. Further information on egoism is
available from the Internet Encyclopedia
of
Philosophy.

I would first like to point out that this question is very odd:
utilitarianism is an ethical theory, as such it is either correct or it
is incorrect. If it is correct, then it has no weaknesses.
Never-the-less, the question is asked frequently enough to warrant
it being answered here.

Tom Regan has suggested some (more-or-less) reasonable criteria for an
ethical theory (see The Case For Animal Rights section 4.3), and against
these we see that utilitarianism does very well indeed:
It is consistent, it has ample scope (it covers all actions), and it is
reasonably precise.

On the subject of agreement with intuitions, I can say that
in terms of the core values, utilitarianism is in complete
agreement with my intuitions - in my experience, happiness and hapiness
alone is felt to be intrinsically good or worthwhile, and suffering alone
is felt to be intrinsically bad or disvaluable.

In terms of right and wrong, there are a number of
counter-intuitive implications, but I would reject the
idea that our intuitions of right and wrong are reliable. For example, if
our intuitions of what a person is are wrong - and they are, see
Reasons
and Persons by Derek Parfit - then why would we assume them to be
correct on (e.g.) whether it is right or wrong to kill a person?

Science has comprehensively confounded "common-sense" in all
empirical matters. Our traditional ethical intuitions, when wrapped in
secular guise, are less susceptible to experimental challenge. It would be
a piece of singular good fortune if the least testable aspects of
common-sense
folk-wisdom just happened to be the ones that could most be relied on.

There is a substantial body of scientific evidence that we are taught
our "intuitions" of right and wrong, via the process of socialization
and (Pavlovian) conditioning. That being the case, we should give up
the claim to special insight on their behalf.
Our intuitions on intrinsic value are perhaps more reliable than those
on right and wrong, since we do not need to be taught to value happiness
or disvalue suffering - rather the valuation of them is intrinsic to those
experiences.

If, on the other hand, one believes that one's intuitions always
correctly discriminate right from wrong, then one need not take the
trouble to learn about utilitarianism (or indeed any other ethical theory)
- so why even ask the question?

In short, my answer to the question is this:

Utilitarianism's "strength" is that it is correct.

Utilitarianism has no "weaknesses".

Of course, many people disagree with utilitarianism.
A collection of some of their arguments is available
here.

Whether it is right to keep a promise depends not only on the
effect this has on the happiness of the promiser and the promisee,
but also the community at large. That is to say, it is generally
worth keeping a promise because it can be very
upsetting and distressing to be deceived by one who is trusted,
and (if the community finds out about it) it can make society
generally less trusting and less co-operative.

One must be very careful not to give one's own position favourable
treatment - to not accept, as sufficient grounds for our breaking of a
promise, grounds which we would not hold sufficient if someone
else had given them for their breaking of a promise.

That said, there are some cases where utility is better served by
the breaking rather than the keeping of a promise.
For example, if (while in a drunken rage) I had promised to kill
someone, that would probably not be a good promise to keep.
And even the most carefully considered of commitments can sometimes go
astray.

Utilitarianism does not accept that the "guilty" deserve "punishment"
- it views punishment
as a prima facie evil since it involves the
infliction of harm. This harm can be justified if it has greater benefits
in terms of maintaining order in the community, or similar, but the
utilitarian position is that if punishment is not justified by utility
then it is not justified at all.

Many people, usually critics, suggest that Mill held a very different view
of utilitarianism to Bentham. For example, it is suggested that Mill was
more inclined to rule-utilitarianism, and related concern for "rights".
However, this only displays the ignorance of such commentators on the work
of Bentham, who spent many years working out a system of laws (i.e.
rules) by which people could live to maximize utility.
It might also be suggested that Mill was for the extending of the vote to
women, as he surely was, but so too was Bentham so no disagreement can be
found here. (And in any case this would not be a difference in point of
theory, only in estimation of the results of that theory - see the FAQ on
politics.)

There does seem to be at least one point on which Mill considered his
position to be different to Bentham's, and may have been correct, and this
is on the concept of "quality" of pleasures and pains which Mill introduced in
chapter2 of his
essay. (I have commented on this concept of quality
elsewhere.) Apart
from this one point, I believe Mill was very much a standard Benthamite
utilitarian.

Technically, according to utilitarianism, no acts are supererogatory -
for each act, either you should do it or you should not do it. Even on
those utilitarian definitions of "should", "ought", etc which admit of
positive and/or negative degrees, there is not some class of acts that are
"better than is morally required", for utilitarian morality always
requires the best [2].
However, this should not be misinterpreted: on minor issues, the feeling
of the agent may be all important in determining the value of the act. So
Utility does in fact say, of many things, "Do it, if you like; and if you
don't like it, don't do it." When this is recognized, it may be that the
apparent appeal of some acts being supererogatory is substantially
diminished.

Notes

[1] There is some
evidence that Bentham was
aware of the animal liberation issue. It seems likely, in that case, that
he declined to clarify his position in this area to avoid his theory
becoming subject to ridicule - society simply wasn't prepared to consider
the idea in his day. I suggest it is for similar reasons that Bentham's considered
views
on homosexuality (he was against punishment for it, and saw
little if any harm in it) were not published in his life-time. (Similarly,
he was quite shy in his support for giving women the right to vote - his
unpublished papers are clearer on this than those he published.)

[2] I take the view that so-called "satisficing
utilitarianism" is not really a kind of utilitarianism, though it
is a form of consequentialism.